Food Stamps
My wife has discovered a new app called Yuka. The app uses your phone’s camera to scan UPC symbols of food products and it gives them a score from 0 to 100, with 100 being the healthiest for you. She loves it, while I am not a fan. While I concede that some of my choices are not the best nutritionally, it is disheartening to find some of favorite foods getting scores of 0.
My wife hopes the app will help us make healthier purchases at the grocery store. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is hoping to help us with the same thing.
In April, the agency intends to release its long-awaited update to the FDA’s definition of “healthy” food. “There is already a regulation on the books, it was established in the ‘90s, that set criteria for saying food is healthy,” Jim Jones, the FDA Deputy Commissioner for Human Foods, told reporters last month. “We are basically updating it to reflect current science.”
The proposed changes to the definition will require certain amounts of nutrition and limits on things like added sugars and sodium. Currently, only about 3% of manufactured foods are allowed to claim they are healthy to eat. Raw fruits and vegetables are not part of this 3% because they are not manufactured, so they would automatically qualify as healthy. According to Jones, the changes are unlikely to significantly alter which foods would be eligible under the new definition.
Shortly after the definition of ‘healthy’ is updated, the FDA also plans to unveil a new logo that food manufacturers could stamp on their packaging to advertise them as “healthy.” Like the Yuka app, the FDA’s logo is intended to alleviate confusion for consumers about what products are actually good for you.
Jones hopes the logo will help consumers identify which foods actually meet their new benchmarks for what counts as healthy. “They wouldn’t have to use it, but our experience is that they probably would,” he said.
While the FDA has not yet released the details of what its final logo will look like, earlier drafts resemble the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s organic foods seal and the Whole Grains Council’s stamp that already appears on many foods. “It really is about working with consumers and manufacturers about what logo would best communicate this and be easily recognizable,” Jones said.
The FDA began updating the definition of “healthy” in 2016. Early drafts were supported by many food manufacturers. Several, though, were opposed to the changes.
“FDA’s proposal reflects a paradigm shift in how ‘healthy’ is defined, with proposed nutritional criteria that go beyond the latest science related to establishing healthier eating patterns,” Conagra Brands, the manufacturer of the Healthy Choice brand of frozen meals, said in a letter last year. Under the FDA’s new definition of “healthy,” their products may not qualify and would be precluded from using the new logo. As a result, Conagra claims it is “the largest industry stakeholder impacted” by the changes.
“In a study we conducted after the release of the proposed rule, consumers indicated they would be less willing to buy meals re-designed to meet the proposed criteria compared to our current ‘healthy’ meals,” the company claimed.
Personally, I don’t need an app or an FDA logo to identify which foods are good for you. I’ll just follow my dad’s words of wisdom when it comes to healthy choices: if something tastes really good, you should probably spit it out.
Reg P. Wydeven
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